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Visiting Writers Series: Tony Hoagland

Even if you've never encountered Tony Hoagland's poetry, you can get a sense of its droll irreverence from watching his interviews on YouTube. In one, he likens his old University of Iowa classmates to people who'd just been diagnosed with leukemia: "They were writing poems about their own funerals, they were writing poems about looking at the trees and seeing death, they were all dressed entirely in black — this was before anti-depressants." Even in its darkest moments, nothing in collections like Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty will be mistaken for Plath's "Daddy" or Eliot's "Wasteland." Erudite yet unpretentious, Hoagland's thought-provoking, razor-sharp wit is sure to be a highlight of Colorado College's Visiting Writer Series. His free talk begins at 7 tonight in Palmer Hall's Gates Common Room (1025 N. Cascade Ave., 389-6607). — Bill Forman